Lightning Look to Rebound vs Lowly Red Wings

The Tampa Bay Lightning take on the Detroit Red Wings for the eighth and final time this season in the only game of the day on Sunday afternoon. The Red Wings have surprisingly won three of the seven meetings so far, including a 1-0 shootout victory on Saturday afternoon.

Sportsbook Odds Analysis

The game opened with the Lightning favored at -320 and the line can now be found between -330 and -350. The total opened at 5.5 and is locked in at that number with the UNDER favored in the -110 to -120 range.

Tampa Bay News & Notes

The Lightning are one of the best teams in the NHL, but they have had their troubles with the Red Wings this season. The talent disparity is borderline laughable. Yet the Wings have won three of seven meetings and the last two meetings were 5-1 and 1-0 losses for Tampa.

As unlikely as it may be for the Wings to shutout the defending champion Lightning, Tampa did thoroughly dominate Saturday’s game at even strength. Tampa had twelve high danger chances in the game to just four from Detroit. Tampa also had 25 overall scoring chances to Detroit’s eleven and outshot the Wings 21-12 at even strength. Tampa’s expected goals for percentage was 74.44 per cent, their highest share of the expected goals in a game since early March.

Brayden Point had four high danger chances himself on Saturday and is the team’s leading scorer this season. Look for him to light the lamp Sunday.

Detroit News & Notes

Though the Red Wings seem to find a bit of magic when they play the Lightning, they have been terrible for most of the season and are now missing a few of their most talented players from the lineup.

Dylan Larkin, Tyler Bertuzzi, Bobby Ryan and Franz Nielsen are all out for the season and a couple of them have been out a very long time. Robby Fabbri is also on the injured reserve for the Wings. Those players represent three of the top eight scorers on a team that does not score very often. Through 53 games, only one player on the team has more than ten goals this season (Adam Erne with eleven). New addition Jakub Vrana, who was acquired at the trade deadline last month, is already tied for fifth on the team with six goals. He has played in eight games.  

It should not be surprising that the Wings rank near the bottom of the league in even strength scoring. Only two teams have fewer 5 on 5 goals than the Wings’ 82.